Chess Legends to Play at a Special Celebration

Chess legends to meet at Zurich station January 22, 2009 To celebrate its 200th anniversary, Zurich chess club has announced it will host a competition between 200 amateurs and eight greats of the game. The event will be held in Zurich's main station on August 22. The following day the experts will face each other in a speed chess play-off. Zurich chess club, reportedly the oldest in the world, will be the centre of world chess for two days when seven former world champions – and a Swiss runner-up – show off their skills. The former world champions are Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Boris Spassky, Ruslan Ponomariov, Veselin Topalov and current world champion Viswanathan Anand. Viktor Korchnoi, a Russian-born Swiss grandmaster who at 77 is the oldest player still on the circuit, will complete the eight. As Kasparov and Spassky no longer play competitive chess, they will be replaced on August 23 by Judit Polgár, by far the strongest female chessplayer in history, and Werner Hug, former junior world champion and a member of Zurich chess club. [Photo: Judit Polgar, Round 2, 2008 Corus] To launch the bicentenary, an open tournament will be held from August 9-15 in Zurich's Congress House with prize money of SFr100,000 ($86,000).